London, Revisited

After two quiet nights in Cardiff, we were back to London, primed to do all of the museums and activities we'd skipped six weeks earlier.

After checking into our hostel near Hammersmith Station, we walked to the Natural History Museum. The museum is housed in a gorgeous Victorian building, adorned with carved stone animals on the outside and stuffed animals on the inside (sad, when you think about it). The museum also boasts lots of plastic models, and a huge display of dinosaur skeletons.

That night, we took the tube to the City and crossed the river. We'd bought tickets to Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus at the Globe Theatre, reconstructed to resemble its Shakespearean-era self.

We had floor tickets, so we stood in the crowd at the foot of the stage and looked up at the players and at the rings of balcony seats stacked up to the ceiling. Highly recommended if you're in London and have a soft spot for old Bill and his contemporaries.

We woke up late the next morning, and by afternoon we'd made it to the British Museum, where the vast collections represent nearly the whole world and tackle many, many eras of history. Essentially the place is full of booty. British explorers and adventurers collected the valuable objects - be they fossils or Peruvian gold or whatever else - and then donated them to the museum. Among the many displays, there are rooms full of sarcophagi and statues from Egypt and Persia, and many, many mummies of all sizes.

Sometimes this game of finders-keepers doesn't go over well: many governments around the world have unsuccessfully demanded back the treasures taken from their lands, and the biggest squabble is ongoing. The British Museum has a whole wing of sculptures and carved marble from the Parthenon in Athens, taken in the early 1800s when Greece was under Ottoman rule. Greece has been trying for years to reclaim them, but the museum and each British government have refused. The pamphlet that is distributed in the museum to explain the situation basically argues that the priceless artifacts are safer in London.

Our final day was spent at the Tower of London. It's worth the expensive entrance, primarily because it includes a free tour from one of the Beefeater gaurds - yes, those guys in the blue and red uniforms that decorate gin bottle. And yes, they do wear those fabulous puffy hats.

Our tour was fantastic. Our guide was engaging, very knowledgeable and obviously enjoys his job. Especially trying to scare people (children) with the Tower's many horror stories.

For the whole hour, though, I couldn't quite get past the feeling that I knew the man leading us around, with his confident storytelling, his slightly morbid sense of humour, his love of British military history... I felt like I'd spent an hour with my dad! So I was not surprised to learn that all of the Beefeaters are decorated sergeant majors. Sergeant majors always have that special knack for being both fearsome and lovable.

After the tour, we wandered through the castle and around the walls, learning the colourful stories of its royal inhabitants. Up until Queen Victoria's reign, the Tower had a collection of royal beasts: at various times it held everything from lions and monkeys to a polar bear who was allowed to swim in the Thames. Now the only animals are the ravens that hop all over the grounds, wings clipped to keep them here because an old Welsh prophecy foretold the Tower's fall if the ravens were to leave.

At the end of the day, we grabbed our bags from the hostel and headed out to a hotel right beside Heathrow's Terminal 5. Despite the planes taking off over us, shaking the windows and drowning out whatever bad movie we were watching, we were excited: the next morning meant a fight to Istanbul and the next phase of the trip.

S.

Roadtrip: Ireland

Snuggled deep into my sweater, I watched the gray sea slap the stretch of black basalt that has been depicted in legend since ancient times. And no wonder. Descending into the ocean in a lumpy road are surprisingly perfect hexagons, slick with algae and worn smooth by the pounding water and the feet of tourists. Local legend says the Irish giant Finn McCool built a road from here to the Scottish Isle of Iona, where similar formations exist.

This is the Giant's Causeway. Created millions of years ago when cooling magma cracked into vertical columns rather than fashioned by a crafty giant, the stones are impressive. Especially as the usual crowds have now faded away into the cool, misty evening.

We picked our way over the slippery rocks to take a few photos in the fading light and then scrambled back up the path to make dinner.

In the kitchen, we found our ruddy-faced South African host cheerfully chopping pineapples and tossing them into a new-bought, washed-out garbage can. To the fascinated audience, he explains that he still likes to make traditional South African home brews. He adds water, raisins, sugar and yeast and gives the tub a stir with his hairy arm. He locks a lid to the can but opens it up to check the progress an hour later: the thick, yeasty smell fogs the kitchen with the promise of future beer. "Next week," he says, "that will be perfect. Sweet and strong."

The next day we take a short hike down the Causeway Coast trail. The basalt of the Causeway columns continues down towards Carrick-a-Rede, creating a picturesque cliff-scape of pleated stone dropping into the hungry Atlantic. We made it about half-way to Carrick-a-Rede, so about three hours of easy rambling along the top of the cliffs, and nabbed a bus back to the hostel.

Our next destination was Sligo, a town on the West Coast known for its surf. To get there, we drove through the western corner of Northern Ireland, where each village is proclaimed to be either Loyalist or Catholic by their flags. The Loyalist villages are plastered with Union Jacks, on flagpoles, on houses and strung over the streets.

We crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland and headed south through the impossibly green countryside. This is a true cliche,  at least in this region. It rains all the time, so the fields and the forests are lush, sporting every shade of green. Even the tree trunks are covered in creeping ivy vines.

We made it out to Strandhill Beach near Sligo, but the waves were tiny and the water glassy-flat, so we dropped the surfing plan. Instead, we climbed Knocknarea, a pleasant if slippery forty-minute hike up the tabletop mountain that watches over County Sligo. At the top is a massive rock cairn - legend claims this to be the tomb of Queen Mabhe, or Maeve, an ancient Celt who makes appearances in mythology all over Britain and Ireland. There is speculation that below the great cairn lies a passage tomb that would rival the size of Newgrange, but it has never been excavated.

We drove out to the Arrowrock Hostel, south of town, to check in and decide what to do with our afternoon - fortunately, our host enthusiastically told us the perfect plan.

So an hour later, we drove up a bumpy, pothole-ridden track, let ourselves through a sheep gate and parked the rental car. We circled a small ridge, and once we ascended, we found our goal: Carrowkeel, a collection of mid-size cairns marking passage tombs older than Newgrange by a thousand years or two. They haven't been reconstructed or even excavated. They've sat on this ridge, white quartz exteriors glittering in the morning sun, for somewhere between five and seven thousand years. There are fourteen on this set of ridges, and where we were, there are four.

Two are in good shape, although they don't sparkle white like they once did, so we dug out the headlamp. For the first, I climbed over the entrance stone and crawled backwards (otherwise you end up on your back) through the short, narrow tunnel. Dan followed me with a bit of squeezing.

The inside is maybe three metres tall, so we could both stand comfortably. Like Newgrange, the passage opens into a small central chamber with three alcoves at right angles. The inside is smaller and less elaborate than that of Newgrange, but we were free to examine it for as long as we wanted. The only other people on the ridge were an older trio of Irish expats on vacation from England.

The second one was slightly larger, but identical in design. We examined a caved-in cairn, and I belly-crawled into the fourth to confirm that although the passage is still open, the inner chamber has collapsed. We also saw a shallow pit lined with stone slabs that looked very much like the prehistoric graves that are modeled at the Museum of Archaeology in Dublin.

We spent the next day, Sunday, in the Burren National Park, a rugged and stony landscape that, in the south end of the park at least, plunges abruptly into the sea. These are the gorgeous and alarmingly steep Cliffs of Moher.

(Also known as the Cliffs of Insanity in the film 'The Princess Bride,' which, if you have not already seen it, will change your life.)

We drove past the entrance to the visitor's centre and spent a good half hour whipping around the tiny country lanes just south, until we found a suitable spot to leave the car. The weather was shockingly perfect, so we decided to walk along the cliffs from the Hag's Head formation, where a trail begins, to the visitor's centre and back.

Yep, that's me behind the sign.

Officially, you're not supposed to leave the visitor's centre area, where there are walls to prevent you falling to your death, but the trail is beautiful and worth the vertigo so long as you focus on staying on the path and don't leap about like an idiotic gazelle.

We spent the final two nights of our road trip in County Kerry, in the southwest corner of the island.

The first day, we took the famed scenic drive around the Ring of Kerry, where the views of the sea and the jagged islands and the cliffs are beautiful - and in the evening, the tour coaches on the thin roads are mercifully few. We explored an Iron Age ring fort and then drove back to our hostel in Tralee at dusk, through the fairytale forest of Killarny National Park.

And finally, we spent the day at Brandon Beach on the Dingle Peninsula. We rented surfboards and wetsuits for the afternoon (€10 for the day! ) and rolled around in the waves. They weren't huge, but big enough for us to work on standing up and retaining control. It's always nice to see improvement!

In the evening, we drove around Dingle, but I was tuckered out and slept through most of it.

The touristy parts of Ireland - that is to say, most of it - are so for a reason. They are gorgeous, green forests and pastures, they are dramatically stunning cliffs. But on the sidelines there are still quiet and rewarding places. Ours was Carrowkeel - to find those tombs just waiting for us, unattended... amazing.

S.

Dublin

We took a ferry across the choppy Irish sea from Wales to Dublin on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, joining the late summer crowds of tourists that come here for the pubs, the dance, the history and the Guinness.

The best of our three days in Dublin was actually spent outside of the city. We were invited by our roommates, New Zealand mother and daughter team Marion and Charis, to join them for a drive with an Irishman they'd met - Shane - who, in a show of that famous Irish hospitality, had offered to show them the sights.

The five of us spent the day roaming the countryside. We saw two castles: first Malahide Castle, discretely hidden in a woodland, with spacious grounds that now holds concerts (Prince played there the weekend before).

And after lunch was Trim Castle, where the movie Braveheart was filmed. The walls are in tatters, but the keep at the centre stands tall and the ruins make clear the former grandeur of this place.

We went to to the reconstructed passage tomb of Newgrange, Brú na Boinné in Gaelic, a massive earth mound where the light of day only creeps down the nineteen metre passage to the inner chamber on the morning of the winter solstice, and stays there for less than twenty minutes.


Although they were not, at five thousand years of age, the oldest tombs we'd see in Ireland, it's humbling to know that the curious, swirling artwork was already ancient when the great rocks of Stonehenge were dragged into place.

Carved art at Newgrange

South of Dublin, we drove through the Wicklow Mountains to beautiful Glendalough, where we joined a horde of tourists to snap pictures of the ruined monastery amid the picturesque green mountains. Then we drove by the Powerscourt Gardens and then admired the view of Dublin from a vantage point just south: gorgeous. The day was rounded off with pints at the hostel. Shane made our Irish experience richer with his knowledge and hospitality: thank you, and we'd love to return the generosity in Ottawa!

For our two days in Dublin itself, we did lots of wandering around, and the occasional touristy venture. We visited the Guinness brewery at St. James Gate, the highlights of which were (for me) a display of the company's famous advertising campaigns - Guinness For Strength, Guinness is Good for You and of course, My Goodness, My Guinness! - and a beer in the seventh-story Gravity Bar, boasting a 360 degree view of Dublin.

We got our learn on at the Museum of Archeology, where I learned that the spread of red hair through Europe was the fault of Viking marauders (gotta get me a longboat...).

We relaxed in the lush greenery of St. Stephan's Green, then payed homage to the Dublin literary tradition by finding the statue of expat writer Oscar Wilde in a nearby park, and wandering by St. Patrick's cathedral to see Jonathan Swift's grave (sadly inhibited by high entrance fees). At the time I was reading (grappling with? suffering through?) James Joyce's Ulysses... a third of the way through I took a 'break' and have yet to reopen the dense beast.

We pubcrawled our way around the area south of Temple Bar, but didn't actually eat much pub food - eating out in Dublin is wildly expensive. Instead, we found fantastic kebab and falafel (wrapped in naan bread! Genius!) at Sultan Kebab, and then went back no less than four times. You just can't argue with good kebab.

S.

Snowdonia

We stood looking over the breadth of Caernarfon Castle from the top of the Eagle Tower. With its tall walls and lofty turrets perched on the edge of the briny straight facing the Isle of Anglesey, this is the formidable king of the Welsh castles.

Built by the English from the thirteenth century onward Caernarfon and its sister castles encircle Wales, created to repress the freshly conquered Welsh. This particular castle was done on such a scale that rebellion would be discouraged by sheer intimidation.

The design, from the giant octagonal towers to the subtly striped walls and the stone eagles set atop the tower in which we stand, was intended to invoke the image of a grand Roman castle. England's Edward I was trying to create a clear parallel between his own forces and the only previous conquerors, the Romans, for whom the Welsh had a lingering admiration.

Tragically for Edward's intention, to this day the six hundred castles in the ring are looked upon as a symbol of a conquered people, and although they are stunning to see, they inspire admiration in tourists more than in the Welsh people. This is one of the most nationalistic parts of Wales: even the teenagers speak Welsh.

We climbed through the thick walls and up the towers for a few hours, checked out the exhibits and watched a cheesy film narrated by a Welsh ghost.

After leaving the castle, we walked for a good while past the shallow, muddy bay and up the coast, enjoying the sun and the breeze coming off the water.

The next day, we got to Llanberis, a town at the heart of the park, fairly early in the day. We were getting settled in the hostel, above the bright yellow and blue and red Pete's Eats café, and Dan started talking with one of the staff.

Dan told him we planned to climb Snowdon the next day. He mulled this over and then told us that he avoids Snowdon. It's crawling with tourists. If you want a bit of quiet and to see the area properly, that isn't what you want. Try something else as well.

He gave Dan a moderately incomprehensible set of directions in a thick Welsh accent. To paraphrase: "Go down the road here, turn at the outdoors store (the second one, not the first) and then left and right where the hill starts and right. There will be a path to either side, take the correct one or you'll miss the trail entirely. Up the hill, through a green gate, turn left and take the path leading by the derelict church."

It reminded me of getting directions from my uncles in New Brunswick: "go left at that big tree." "No, no that was cut down. Go left where Aunt Margaret's cousin lived, and then down towards the river where the truck fell in that once."

To which you blink a few times, nod slowly and hope for the best.

So we promptly forgot most of the directions, but after some misguided turns, a ramble through a chicken yard and passing at least three green gates and multiple derelict buildings, we miraculously found the correct combination leading up the very ridge we'd hoped to climb.

It looked much steeper than we'd thought.

Too late. Panting all the way, we hauled ourselves up the smooth, steep slope, judged  at every step by molting sheep. I don't really understand why, but there are fences all along these ridges, and then down the sheer cliff sides  Sure, they might keep an especially dumb animal from plummeting down the ridge, but all of the fences have holes where the wire is pushed up and covered with wool from the backs of escapees. Tragically the great escape is always ruined when the sheep gets to the other side and forgets entirely why she's there and how... better eat some grass.

Anyway, we made it to the summit of our little mountain and continued on the ridge, admiring the views across the bogs and forests to the other grassy ridges with stony peaks. On one side we could see Snowdon, the tallest of the bunch, summit in a cloud, the steam train to the top chugging away in a haze of smoke.

We had great cell reception on the ridge, so I had a sit and called my Mom.

Our ridge had a gradual slope on one side, but on the other cut away in a dramatic drop-off, curving around to shelter a calm blue lake.

We climbed a second peak, but on the third decided to follow a sheep path around the side rather than the main path upwards, for novelty as well as to save our legs. We ended up tromping through a huge patch of wild blueberries, which despite Dan's initial hesitation, I devoured. Although I tried to pick the ones off the path, that the sheep hadn't rubbed against as much.

Eventually we descended, hopped through a bog and found the road back to Llanberis.

The next morning, we decided to brave the crowds and climb Snowdon. After a bit of reading about the many paths to the summit, we chose the Pyg track up and the Llanberis track down.

Our guidebook describes the Pyg track as the most rugged and difficult ascent, so we chose it as a challenge. Although it begins at a higher altitude than the others, it climbs swiftly over rocky terrain. We were also hoping that with such a description, it would be a quieter choice.

Not so. The beginning of the path at the Pen-y-Pas car park was chaotic, and the trail was full of people.

We saw a lot of people pulling themselves up the big, rock stairs in jeans and sandals and similar things with no water... I know it isn't an overly difficult climb. You don't need a compass, you probably don't need emergency equipment. You do need proper clothing and water and to take the mountain seriously. Although it is hard to get lost on an ant trail such as this, it happens, and inclement weather is normal. Rescues shouldn't be as common here as they are.

Rant over.

Despite the crowds crawling up the mountain, we were able to enjoy the scenery. This is a popular climb for a reason. The thin, jagged ridge curls into a crescent, the peak of Snowdon itself obscured by that seemingly ever-present cloud. The sheer cliffs tumbled down to cup a small glacial lake on a flat plateau. Our hike led us eventually along the inside of the crescent, upwards until the path began zig-zagging in a steep ascent and we passed into the mist.

I'd love to tell you that the view from the top of Snowdon, the highest UK mountain outside of Scotland, is fabulous and worth the three hour ascent.

If you were to climb on a very clear day, it just might be. But Wales isn't as such known for its sunshine, so I think that is a tricky thing to ensure. And all we saw from inside the mist was tourists. We couldn't even get into the supposedly crap café at the summit because it was entirely jammed with people.

It was a great hike up to the cloud line - the jagged ridge is very beautiful, the lake is picturesque. The climb was challenging but not (we thought, anyway) overly hard.

For our descent we had planned to take the Llanberis track, because it's a gentle (albeit boring) slope down the arm of the ridge that stretches right into Llanberis town. Dan's knee had been bothering him since the rough descent the week before in Glen Coe, so this would be ideal.

You know how I said you don't need a compass? Bring a map at least. We missed the fork for the Llanberis track and ended up coming down an entirely different arm, the Snowdon Ranger's track. It was steeper than we wanted, so Dan suffered a bit. It was, however, less busy than either the Pyg or Llanberis tracks. It came down the rocky backside of Snowdon, through sheep fields and down to the roadway where we were able to grab a bus back to town, complete with a full tour of Snowdonia because we'd ended up on the wrong side of the mountain.

S.

Manchester

We padded gently around the wide, spacious rooms, gazing with respectful envy on the vast collection of leather-bound books laid cozily to rest on the dark, glossy shelves. Down the dusky corridors with their tall, vaulted ceilings were more libraries, waiting with hushed dignity for inquisitive minds.

This is the John Ryland Library, a red brick Victorian-era edifice in central Manchester that was built specifically to house a fabulous and growing private book collection. Now, as well as acting as a library and study area for the University of Manchester, it's a museum, showcasing many important ancient texts and first editions, of which I found most impressive to be a small piece of a Greek bible dated to 125 AD.

Outside the calm of the library, Manchester was vibrant and bustling. A jazz band was ripping up Albert Square in front of the city hall, Piccadilly Garden was blanketed with sleepy sunbathers trying to avoid the inevitable footballs flying about the grass.

When we left the highlands, we spent a few more nights in Glasgow with Piper, as well as her fiancee Danny and his mom Beth, who were visiting from Canada. After a day of intense planning and washing the highland mud out of our clothes, and a tasty meal at the Indian restaurant underneath the apartment (thanks, Beth!), we grabbed a bus to Manchester.

We spent quite a bit of time in the free museums because, well, we like free stuff. Although transport and accommodation can be frustratingly expensive in Britain, many of the excellent museums are entirely free, which is an amazing break for the wallet.

The Imperial War Museum North hit many of the same notes as the other war museums we'd seen in Britain and on the continent, but had a fantastic array of personal stories - to me, these glimpses of humanity during war years are far more gripping than any overriding narrative could be.

The Museum of Science and Industry was also a hit. There is a big collection of both steam and combustion engines, which kept Dan very happy, and the displays about the city's time as the heart of Britain's Industrial Revolution are excellent. Science is fun!

The winner, though, above the informative science bits, was the big exhibit on the evolution of Manchester's sewage systems right from Roman times. Slightly gross, but neat. And we walked through a reproduction sewer that was complete with fake rats.

Just outside the doors of the museum are the physical remnants of the Industrial Revolution:the area known now as Castlefield is full of old rail bridges, big factories and canals.

Although we didn't get to sample any of Manchester's famous nightlife, we did patronize several pubs.

I like British pubs, and so does Dan. I like the bar-style service (rather than table service, and this usually includes ordering food at the bar) because I like the relaxed atmosphere. I love the couches and low tables that make the place feel like a livingroom. Sometimes it actually feels like someone's home: pubs can be a family affair. While we were taking in some afternoon pints at a pub near the science museum, we watched a flock of kids flit between their parents, on the patio, and the park next door. In Tobermory, we watched three generation of family dance to a local cover band. In Cambridge, the proprietor's twelve-year-old son brought out our toasties and did a quality check.

Whether this is good or bad or neither, I don't know, but in the latter two cases it's charming, and undeniably it's part of the pub culture.

S.